2017/09/30

Sequel, Midquel, Prequel and Sequel

Previous post was supposed to be the last of the recent consecutive streak, but there are plenty of deliciousness left I want to share.

Well, this is not delicious, but three makers told me Thursday night of their arthritis, or similar. inflictions interfering with their making; a couple are much younger than me. For me it's been lower limbs and stamina, but let's all be careful, OK? (Even though I have no idea how to be careful about arthritis.)

* * * * *

I had to catch the 5.12 bus to get into town in time to pick up a Richard Ford volume at Volume before they closed at 6, then cross the street to Nicola's Cantina. Because it was Esther's birthday, I wanted to make an effort to dress up, so I donned a black top, black pants, and black shoes so I can put on my step-grandmother's Japanese silk jacket. Came 4.45 and I started my journey; I should reach the bus stop 5.05ish.

Walking up our driveway was fine, but soon afterwards I noticed there was a leaf stuck on my left shoe, so I stepped on it with my right and kept going. It felt my shoes picking up a lot of pebbles, then I saw a twig with three leaves stuck on my left shoe, again, so I peeled that off. I checked my soles for sticky stuff, but there were no gum or dog poo. My shoes felt increasingly awkward with every step, but never mind.

As I crossed Tahunanui Drive, I thought the shoes were going to be OK and plodded along the elementary school, when suddenly, but in retrospect unsurprisingly, my right sole exploded. I don't mean disintegrated, not peeling off the rest of the shoe like another pair a year ago, but it exploded, into narrow strips of black... bits.

I dragged my feet another 10 meters, turning into Rawhiti St, and wondered what to do. The bus stop was closer than my house; I could get into town and ask Ben to pick up a pair of shoes before coming to Nicola's; I could remain barefeet the rest of the evening, not unheard of in Nelson but I never do that, or ring Ben and ask to be picked up, taken home, then taken into town. It was 5.10 and earlier than when Ben usually leaves work, I rang him; he wanted to meet at home but there was no way I could make it, so I stood in the grass, not the sidewalk, for 25 minutes, kids and parents staring at me while they came and went to the basketball court.

Ben drove up laughing, wanted to see my shoes there and then, (I wasn't laughing at all, so no go, mate,) we went home, picked up my navy blue shoes, got to Volume at 5.50, got the book, went to Nicola's, and I ordered a pitcher of red sangria for myself, and Ben a margarita. And the rest of the evening was exquisite.
Said red jacket, which I couldn't put on until we left Nicola's because it was too hot. And I had merino socks in the same red, not that anyone got to see.

* * * * *

Rosie and I powwowed what Stella said about practical considerations in making. Rosie is a bookbinder, and we share difficulties in breaking out of the technical/utilitarian considerations/constraints of our own crafts, so we explored each other's. Rosie proposed we look into the opposite of what our end products usually do, and she chose "telling a story" as the primary function of her books, while I chose the woven cloth's ability to wrap a body, and being pretty. I hope we get a chance to continue this thread.

Everybody at the birthday party love books and, well, tend to buy a lot. Among other things, I said I have a few "current issues" paperbacks which were current when I bought them, got started, but couldn't be bothered finishing. Richard reminded me they now have historical values. He is such a gem.

In the last two nights, I also found out one of friends' kids are finishing university this year, another starting in Feb, two starting their last year at home; one started his first part time job last night, and one I knew as a sweet little boy is now twice as tall as me, (OK, maybe not that tall,) and half my weight. He still had the sweet face, but no wonder the rest of us are getting old. I loved that I was not the only one taking off the glasses to read the menu.

Today we delivered some hellebore babies to Stella and Thomas. I love the idea my kids are going to flourish at Esther's, Maria's and Stella's in the slightly distant future. (Hellebores are so slow and somewhat unexpected.) We ran into Barbara at the supermarket.

Normally two consecutive nights of socializing would start an exhausting regurgitate-a-thon interspersed by variations of, "I should not have said that." It's not that this weekend is an exception, but this is part of living with depression; when the going is good, I try to make the most of life outside my head/house. It may appear almost bipolar from the outside, (I'm not as far as the last psychologist could determine, just mildly/moderately depressed and acutely anxious,) with a barrage of appreciative vibes. I try to curb my enthusiasm without much success, but good people are the best gifts in life, no?

And I love my husband, including the part where he wanted to see the soles right away. But seriously; what was he thinking, when I was struggling just to climb into the car!

2017/09/29

Ben Called it a "Birthday Scroll"

I started writing about this a while back, but since it involves a birthday, I thought it better to hold back. I've been quite pleased with myself about having come up with this idea, though.

Two Saturday morning ago, Esther asked if a Friday night two weeks hence, i.e. tonight, we'd be free to join her birthday dinner. We were/are. I'm "scheduling" this post, so by the time it goes up, we'll be chatting away at a Mexican cantina in town.

I wanted to give her a small cashmere scarf, but to weave it for her specially, and knew the earliest I could get around to it would be Christmas, but most likely much later. So I had this idea of a "card" roughly the size of a small scarf; I cut/pasted a piece of brown wrapping paper and started doodling/collaging, with a promise of a cashmere and/or merino scarf, "of approximately this size, in the design of your choosing within the weaver's grasp and colors of your choice within the weaver's reach," or some such, "to be completed by your birthday in the year 2020."

"Or thereabouts."

I think I can manage. I'm also happy to be retired tax-wise; I can use/mix purchased-for-business and purchased-for-pleasure-or-gifted-or-rescued yarns without measuring and calculating their $ value and putting them in the correct columns.
One of my fav parts don't show up too well... See the gold swirls?

Ben called this a scroll so I tried rolling it up but the water-color-painted collage part, the red part, was too stiff so I went back to the original idea of folding and stuffing in an envelope. The project looks childish, but then she's a museum art educator of students so she's used to childish art, I thought...

* * * * *

Last night's presentation by Stella was fabulous. She brought some of her pieces, many of which I had seen but I got to look really close up, and handle in some cases, and some I didn't know about that informed me more about Stella's making.

Ronnie and Maria were there,  Sue was there talking about a new way to wear my wraps, (in bed, especially when you're not feeling great, which is something I've recommended to many; try it if you have one of my softer pieces,) and good neighbour Duane and Barbara were there, (and gee, we like them a lot.) Ronnie and Barbara are involved in running these talks, and I can now hitch a ride with Barbara if I want to go to future sessions.

Stella touched on art vs. craft for jewelry making, but when I asked how much she thought of the practicalities of a piece, and she said none. One of the "fine lines", (my word), for consideration for her is "to sell," (assuming the buyer wants to wear it,) or to exhibit. What's that for us, for me? My first thought was something-to-wear vs. something-decorative, although... a decorative that is reasonably flexible/wrappable that is of reasonable size would be the equivalent of gigantic or spiky-things-poking-out kind of ring. For example.

Maria and I have been hatching a plan, to get (back) in touch with makers to talk about making, but Stella does a lot of collaborative work and curating, so there may be new components to our future discussions. We and my friend Alison, a painter/dress-maker, are powwowing at my place in a fortnight. Ben might bake a cheesecake for the occasion. :-D

* * * * *

I cleaned the basement yesterday, after much dithering. And I'm glad I did because it was worse than I expected; there was mold on the walls of the far side of the room, near the single-glazed window and door. Not a lot like we used to see in the house before upstairs were refitted with double-glazing, (I was wiping at least twice a week,) but then we have the shower we use more often downstairs, and I think I'm correct in saying we had more cold days and more rain this winter. None of these would have mattered had I been going down regularly, like I do other years; when I find something fishy, I clean as I go, but this year I used the upstairs shower much later into autumn just to avoid going downstairs.

Should be OK now I've washed the walls with vinegar, but Ben's going to move the drawer/desk thing so I can wipe behind that, too.

I also have too much wool downstairs, stuff I had planned to use up by the end of last year, and you know the more breathing room you give wool, the more they expand. I can't believe all of that used to occupy one-half of the big box upstairs; now they don't come near fitting in another big box. (And the upstairs box is full without my adding.)

Over the years I've been donating yarns that weren't nice, but kept everything of reasonable quality/size/color. I changed my mind yesterday and decided to further give away yarns I won't weave with. Some are too harsh, and while I lament parting with them, (mostly old-style weaving yarns with scale left on!) but they will be better served by someone who repurpose them, and I'll regain space and peace of mind. I hate having to label my pieces car/boat/camp/cabin-suited to mean, to me at least, they aren't as soft and lovely like my "usual" stuff.

Right.

2017/09/28

Dad

My Dad would have been 90 today. I'm not sure what he'd make of this new world; angrier than 2000 or hysterically laughing after running out of options. I'm pretty sure we would have been in frequent contact, my being his political offspring, trying to outdo each other name-calling politicians; neither of us were/are satisfied by boring ones, although I've logn run out of creativity this time around.
That's him on the right and his younger brother, who predeceased Dad by a couple of years; they were the last of their nuclear family by 40-plus years, having lost two elder siblings as kids, then their father when Dad was 33 and their mother when Dad was 43. So, well done, Dad, for sticking around until I was 55. This would have been taken probably some time in the 1930's/40's, before The War.

When we were cleaning up the house after Dad died, Mom commented Dad's family had astonishing amounts of studio-shot photographs, not just from this generation but from the grandparents' generation, when "these things weren't cheap." I don't know if her family had photos and lost them in in the fires in the war, or if Grandpa was too busy to think of it. My cousins, (Mom's big brother's girls,) who lived next door to us also had studio photos taken at least once a year that I knew of, which I envied because they looked so posh, but turned out to be irreplaceable gifts because they lost both parents ridiculously young.

Tonight I have Stella's talk to go to, "No time for Art! (Or how to make jewelry in another dimension)"; Dad would have loved the idea, "at your ripe old of age of 59.5-minus-five-days," (and he would have said exactly that; I get my penchant for details from him,) I still think there is wonder to be had in life.

* * * * *
The cushion cover is done and the whole warp off the loom, and the client still wants the two blankets, so that's a relief. A tube, without floating selvedges, wove quickly. And pretty big, at 45cm long. I had a tad more warp left, but I thought just the dark weft was nicer than a bit of lighter coming out of nowhere at the end. The only thing is, I wanted the outside of the cushion, (inside of the tube as I wove,) to have more weft (blue) showing, and checked and double-checked the 1/2/2/3 twill but failed. The start of the piece has single-layer plain weave, which was meant to go inside as a seam (?) and the other end, tubular plain weave. So, errrr... Hum.

* * * * *

Stat Counter reminded me blogs can be, and this one is occasionally, read machine-translated. And while I don't give a lot of credence to machine translators, having been a human version in previous lives, there are measures writers can take to make the machine-translated text "readable". As in not using so much colloquialism. But then it takes away the character of the writer and the flavor of blogs, and while I know sometimes I overdo it, I also like it here because Unravelling is more about a record of how I spend my life. Rather than respectable weaving.

Hee hee...

Eh.

2017/09/27

Good Thing Weaving (and Moving) Forward is Easier than Backward

I finished weaving the blue baby blanket; all things considered it was fast. Ish. Although this width, and this draft particularly, was hard on the body, I love weaving on the big loom as we've done the most to accommodate it to my body size. And with no broken warps in the two blankets, (that I remember,) and only a slightly weird tension on the left, I hope, I hope, they finish up nicely. Wouldn't my client be surprised to hear from me after a year of silence! And I'm fine if she doesn't want them.
For the warp end present to myself, I'm going to weave a simple twill or plain tube with merino bouclé to make what I hope will be a skinny cushion cover, about the size of half a pillow. (If I run out of the dark wefts, I'll finish with the light.)
I did this at the end of Cherry Blossom way back, and though it's tiny, I love the cushiony feel. The size, (inside is 30cm*30cm commercial cushion insert folded in half,) is handy in filling the gap behind your back, neck, under a knee, etc. In fact, it's super handy while travelling, and while this one doesn't travel because the bouclé loops proved more fragile than I expected, I might make a fabric-covered one. (And I may even spring for latex foam rather than a regular cushion insert.) Cherry had merino in the warp, this is merino/mohair, and at a slightly tighter EPI, so this will have a different feel, but that's OK.

On Monday, I remembered the Pillars warp-end door piece needed washing. It's been hanging on the basement door for five years, and though I occasionally vacuumed and turned it upside down and inside out, I neglected it completely in the year I didn't weave, so while weaving the baby blanket, I put it through the gentlest rinse/spin cycle, in weak vinegar water. (Against some hesitation, I must add, but this machine does such a great job on our sweaters, so nothing to worry about, right?)
Yikes.
I know! And slightly less grievous bodily harm to the left, almost in the same rows, too. And I can't figure out where the rust mark came from. I might mend it; I might do something else; there is always the compost bin.

Yikes.

That, and the search for suitable wefts for the blanket warp leftover showed me in warm spring daylight the true state of the basement. Usually I can say it's only messy and crowded, but it's really icky after not using, moving things around, and ventilating in the way one does when using a space rather than just turning on the bathroom vent and leaving doors/windows open. Which is what happened for a year.

I've been disgusted at the state of upstairs these last few days as the sun rises higher and I can see dirt in ways different from the sideway sun of the winter, (that's bad, too,) feeling the screamingly dire need for a good clean. (By the way, I'm Japanese, so spring cleaning is not on my calendar when hay fever is at it's worst; Japanese clean house like mad folks at the end December near dead of winter. Mom used to say it sanitizes the house, too. In Nelson we've gone for big cleaning in summer when we can evacuate stuff outside and work long hours, and sanitize in a different way, I suppose.) But the basement pointed out I really was depressed some of the last year, how not only did I try not to think of, but didn't think of cleaning.

In my defence, there was the big food issue, and I kept up with not just laundry but ironing, and I tried/learned new things with paper, and to be faced with not just the garden that's in a bad shape, and I have limited time before I go to Japan with priorities that may or may not fit in that time, and next to no time before we take off South, and really no time before we have Mrs and Dr Cady for lunch/dinner or an extended Q&A, and JB and Ali and hopefully Duane and Barbara from next door, who are all very tidy people. Yikes. I so wanted to have Duane and Barbara over the winter.

I don't like living like this.

So instead of crossing off the baby blankets on my To Do list, (because it's not done, I just finished weaving them is all,) I added "Clean basement".

And to be honest, I don't really want to go to Japan this time; first time Ben said it may not be a nice idea. But that's another story.

2017/09/25

The Weekend that Was

And I am totally out of touch with a world that could have had Corbin, Sanders, common sense, or our own Jacinda Ardern, but refuses to.

I'd written a whole lot more, but the crux of the matter is, we are waiting for overseas/special ballots and won't know until early/mid-October which way the third party's professional kingmaker will fall, (from memory, this is his third time!), even though politicians have started talking and media speculating energetically. Either way, even if She get in, it will be an uncomfortably slim majority. The good news is, She's still 37.

And there's a good chance NZ$ will plummet, (further,) which makes this a good time to have an online sale, which I decided on the weekend to put off until Dec/Jan/Feb to concentrate on my priorities. Maybe not. I am cutting back on mixed media now.
(That's not Her on the telly; it was an advert for an Al Jazeera doco on drug trafficking.) Staying up late watching the telly, moving the clock forward an hour, and then watching some more telly, even though I stuck to explanations/timeline and none of the speculations, I am exhausted, and will now go back to worrying only about nukes vaporizing my country of birth. I'm weirdly confident South Korea won't be nuked, but then who knows in this new world.
The cherry is 90% open, later than usual, the tree is producing about 60-70% of flowers this year. Must remedy. And here, as in Japan, those delicate flowers opening up means open season for rain/wind and this week we might even have some thunder and lighting to make things interesting, before spring settles in.

The weather has been extraordinarily rewarding to conscientious gardeners; fairly consistent rain-sun-rain-sun cycle combined with sudden warming; flagrantly embarrassing for others of us. But priorities beckons me to the looms today.

2017/09/23

Catching Up

General election here today, (we voted early;) daylight savings starts tonight, (i.e. "the short weekend";) and somewhere in/near South Minneapolis, 40th reunion of Washburn High School Class of '77 is happening later. Oh, and a month from tomorrow, I'm supposed to fly to Japan at the crack of dawn, and I'm just hopin' and prayin' the Two Big Babies would stick their thumbs in their mouths for a while.

* * * * *

I thought I wove these a year ago September, rather than July. Never mind. I washed the yellow-green and the Christmas colored pieces on Wednesday.
The yellow green piece was particularly nicely woven, for me; the left selvedge is near straight. Most interestingly, the gray warp and the yellow-green are so close in value it's hard to see the design, especially while still wet, and that's a first for me. (The photo is after is completely dried.)
The Christmas-colored piece looks pretty much as I expected. Though I didn't expect the stripes to appear so crooked, (they're not, I just went back to check, excepte for the bottom red stripe, :-D) in combination with the movement of the design.
I washed the charcoal gray piece and the leftover as soon as I finished the warp last year. The charcoal gray was meant to be a present for a special friend, but what can I say..... Scalloped selvedges and, goodness me... Back then I understood better the tension problem and knew how I tried to remedy it, but now I forgot.
The disappointing thing is, I wove this in what I think is often called Gray Marl warp and a straightforward charcoal gray weft, so the combo shows the pattern nicely. (And sorry for the unfocused pic; I can't find the sweet spot on my glasses this morning; need the hinges checked again as my prescription hasn't changed in six years.)

The warp is the same as my pillars; Mom said she had a whole lot more so I rescued the rest. But are they? My pillars turned out softer, from memory, with rougher weft while I used the plush Possum/Merino/Silk in these, and still these pieces turned out scratchier, most markedly the gray one. I'm pondering calling them "car" or "camp"  wraps. Or similar.

* * * * *

Ben's cold came back this week and we both wasted two days. Tess said her doctor in Edinburgh, (that's Scotland!) mentioned a cold on in Australia and New Zealand this winter. Our own doc Karl told Ben minimum four weeks, so we must have that fashionable cold.

On Wednesday I thought I might just be able to manage the red and baby blanket commissions AND a wooly online sale before I go, but with a month left, I'll have to concentrate/prioritize. Darn, just when I had this rare feeling I was catching up for the blank year, ergo the title of the post. Or maybe this is just the new, new normal; even slower, and managing even fewer things, but trying to feel better about things I do get done. Speaking of which, I can't believe I'm still sticking to faces-every-day (more or less) project, and lately I'm into Picasso's Dora Maar portraits.
From memory, these were right-hand blinds, (I don't call mine contours as I'm unruly and all over the place.)
And sometimes I play with somewhat-Modigliani-esque characters.
And my first, (I think,) dog!! I'm so used to layers in mixed media now as a result collaborations I overdo them when I'm working by myself. I'd like to step back and try to remember my preference for simplicity, for variety sake if nothing else.

And I get to keep Tess' book since I liked it so much; she's made another for our swap. Bliss!!

* * * * *

For as long as we've been in New Zealand, I saved short stories, story-/character-/plot-ideas in a folder, and from time to time dipped into them, but less and less often. Like any wannabe-writers, I thought some were cracker ideas, entertaining and humorous, but this week I deleted the folder. It's not that I'm not disinterested in writing, but the bulging mess was another source of regret, guilt, and a measure of a different life that might have been. I don't know if this means I'm giving up on another thing that was important to me, or getting better at living in the now. Forgetting things so easily helps. Or doesn't help.

I still listen to copious amounts of writer interview podcasts, and my fav for the last couple of years have been Sarah Vowell and Colm Toibin but I've added Richard Ford of late. So here's a wee present for you: this is the funniest authors interview I've ever listened to, and one of the few I return to every few months. 

Colm Toibin in particular gives me so much story and character ideas I'm often not listening to what he says but working on my own stories in my head, which is why I like/have to listen to him over and over again.

* * * * *

Mine's a jolly good life considering everything else that's going on in too many places. And by the end of the day, we just might have a bright, young, honest prime minister with a pony tail. Fingers, toes, arms, eyes, and everything else crossed. That's such an uplifting thought compared to three years ago when we wanted to quit New Zealand. Anyway, go her! (There's a new law here that says you can't "endorse" candidates on the day of the election. I started this post on Wednesday, but reckon just to be on the safe side.)

2017/09/17

This Possibly New Thing

This is the new piece alongside the three false starts. It is straighter and the edges better than they look. I haven't pressed them because I wanted to see them "without makeup", as it were, and I cut off  tails when dry. And I'm surprisingly pleased with it. These are my thoughts:

* I wished I had more weft colors. I have an in-your-face pink, an orange-yellow, and three oranges; also a few achromatics, the lightest of which I plan to use with the lightest warp. And a bright red which I can use, if I have any leftovers after the upcoming big red piece. A couple of saturated blues, a purple, and a teal or a green would have been nice to "juj" up the picture but I'm not buying for now as I still have plenty, just not in 20/2. (By the way, have you ever googled "Juj something up" to check the spelling? Mindboggling.)

* I am right in thinking a foot loom is best for this technique so I don't have to think about the pattern/treadling as much as when weaving on handlooms. I have two foot looms, a 16-shafter, which is too hard on cashmere warps, and this 4-shaft Jack, on which I weave standing up. This has nothing to do with the height of the bench, but the shortness of me, especially the legs, and the desire to press the pedals from above and not in an angle, and to observe the fell from above and not from an angle. Over the years weavers have suggested gazillion things that does not apply to me, short of, (see what I did there?) cutting the vertical elements of the loom and lowering the entire mechanism, which destabilizes the loom unless done expertly, and I'm not willing to going there. I'm short.

The problem in this case is I like to get very close "down" and personal when I clasp the wefts, for the right tension and the position, and so I bent down every other pick, which slowed down the weaving and made me queasy every time I had to look for the other sweet spot on my glasses when I resurfaced. One possibility is to switch to a more complicated threading and easy lifting on the 8-shaft table loom and weave on the kitchen table, but I'm not crazy about the very short distance between the shafts and the front beam, and Klick's shed is too small for this sort of carry-on. Another, from a different perspective, is to use merino warp with cashmere weft on the 16-shaft.
* This warp was threaded in a pointed threading and woven in 2:2 twill, meaning, with the clasped weft there was going to be more than a few places where the pattern would be disrupted in the interest of clasping/holding. I saw this anomaly after I started the first false start and brought it up with Pat, and I decided to just go ahead. I tried to correct them by forcing the shuttles acrobatic moves, but in some cases, from memory, I found no fix. This is Issue One for further observation/investigation.

* I noticed sometimes the clasps came with a half loop created by the left weft. As I got used to the mechanism of clasping, I made a rule I'll weave the right weft first, then the middle if any, and the left one last, which seemed to have reduced the occurrences of these loops, but I couldn't eliminate them, sometimes even when I tugged on the weft while the shed was still open. I' not sure if I understand the problem correctly. This is Issue Two.
(I know I had this problem but after a wash, I can't see it except some clasps are looser than others. But I did find a naughty full loop and I hope I eliminated most of the.)

* I beat the heck out in the three false starts but this was remedied in the completed piece, or Start Four. The bleach bottle-weighted left selvedge is no worse than the right. The cloth in the finished piece, which worried me while weaving, is like any cashmere piece I've woven, and 16EPI worked fine, as will 15 or 18. I mixed two threadlings in one piece, which was fun.

Now for the important part:

* Using three colors in one shot may make the cloth look interesting, but not necessarily; it depends on the width of the piece in the first place, and the length of the piece and shapes in the second. In narrow pieces like this first one, it may not be as effective, or even overly fussy, especially when the piece is worn. In wider pieces the effort may be worth more.

* For expediency and the integrity of the cloth, I chose to weave the first piece with large patches of one color. And as a whole, I think it looks interesting enough, ergo being surprisingly pleased. I try to imagine a whole piece with more frequent color changes, (thank goodness I have samples of three false starts - those and the inbetween bits make up roughly one-third of a full piece in length,) and I can't see one look being better than the other, just different. I have the choice of learning the mechanism first, or focusing on the shapes/colors, but another one of these warps won't go on the loom until December so plenty of time.

* If a color appears/disappears anywhere but from either selvedge, the tail of the weft needs to be sewn in, and I felt uneasy doing this; the bottom sample in the top pic has rusty orange between the yellow and pink. The washed/dried cloth is soft and thinnish, and I can tell where the weft is doubled. I'll stick to introducing colors from the selvedge, but should a tail need sewing in, I'll do it most definitely on the loom, as it emerges.

* All in all, drawing/doodling shapes, and then possibly a template, may prevent future regrets. Although, y'know, it could preclude surprises, too.

Coming up this week: finish weaving the blue baby blanket; thread and sample, at the very least, the red warp; and for goodness sake, weed and put down at least the remaining too-big-for-seed-raising-mix hellebore babies. And help Mom upgrade Skype by phone if at all possible.

2017/09/15

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

Insomnia, ugh. In terms of sleep, I had the most regular and satisfying sleep pattern since I became a teenager (!!) during the year I didn't weave. Why is that? Life returning towards normal has applied to sleep pattern, too, unfortunately, although in the last month I was able to finalize/select two drafts that troubled me during the day. I'm also getting used to projects progressing slowly, living on Weavers' Time.

I've had a few things on my mind since the last post, most of which I can tell you in this post; the last one, the "tapestry technique" experiment, will be in the next because I need good pics, clarifying thoughts, and it would help if the piece dries before I photograph it.  
The red warp. It's a red warp and we all know what that means in digital pics, so I tampered with the this one enough to make the different stripes of the color progression show up better. I decided on the wobbly squares in the previous post because I thought it'd suit the color progression better and it was a cinch to modify to match the number of warp ends.  From memory, the weft is in the red you see in the half-width stripes at both selvedges. Yes, both edges are in the same red.

Yup...

* * * * *

I received Tess' book in the somewhat-entangled (it's really knot; see what I did there?) LJ swap, and it's so beautiful I've been must marvelling at it's simple beauty and so far hesitated to work on it. Here are some pics. Actually I might scan every page before I work on it as every spread is sublime. 
 In this I see either a floating city in the sky or an EKG of a beautiful mind.
In this I see a musical score culminating in a dozen or more symbals at the end. 
She also glued the sections in a simpler way, which made the book easier to look at and to work in. Too much thinking for mine? Very possible. Because I had a preconceived notion this was a square book and always placed two sides parallel to the table's edge, and sampling told me a spread will open up or down, (and back or front), I mixed things up to even out the up/down element. Confused? Never mind. But if you ever want to experiment with these, try having all Corner As on top of each other in your first one; it makes life easier.

* * * * *

For some years our local cinema has shown Met Opera and National Theatre Live, (or should it be Lives?) I've always wanted to go and marked brochures every year but finally made it on Wednesday, and what a splendid experience it was.

I saw "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead", (trailer,) a play that intrigued and puzzled me for close to 40 years. So much so when I discovered a beautiful bookshop in St Paul days before I left Minnesota for good, (Jan 1981, near Macalester College,) I bought a collection of Stoppard's plays as my very last purchase. I tried reading the play several times, (plays are my second fav genre to read,) but found this play incredibly difficult to understand on the pages; I didn't bother reading the other plays but gave the book away.

It was indeed good to see it. I can never pick up all or even much of the lines in period plays, but this was a lovely production with strong actors, and lovely but not strictly period costumes. The stage set was minimalist but beautiful, but really, the acting was mesmerizing. Joshua McGuire and David Haig were masterful, but a couple of tragedians with no lines intrigued me more: I'll be on the lookout for Louisa Beadel and Alex Sawyer in the future.

Daniel Radcliffe was in it, too; though I have nothing against him, it was the stark contrast of his depth of theatre training with everybody else's that enabled me to deeply appreciate the others. (Ben and I've been talking about this, with increasing mixture of English and American actors in films we see, many English actors mixing theatre and film careers.) Radcliffe's diction was muffled; his facial expression, hidden behind a beard, nonexistent; and he had a tiny vocabulary of body language. It was only when the camera got closer that his inclusion was justified, somewhat. (Besides the international PR value.) And though this is hardly his fault, he has a markedly smaller head than McGuire and Haig, which made him peculiarly less visible, less noticeable, on the stage.

And one last thing. The fewer the lines, the less significant the roles, very generally speaking the actors were taller and slenderer. This made stunning visuals in the few scenes a whole lot of them were on stage. And I mean, jaw-dropping.

Now I want to read the play.

Alarm going off in quarter of an hour; I better try to catch some Z's.

2017/09/11

I See Red

The remedy for yesterday's cashmere blunder was a no brainer; because the wefts were clasped, I unpicked, (rather than attempt a sexy maneuver with a needle,) wove another 40cm and finished the piece. Instead of starting the second piece, I cut off the first piece and began pulling the rest of the warp forward; I couldn't finish tonight, but tomorrow morning I hope to have shortened warp with more even tension that can go back on the loom later. Then I'm putting the red warp on so I can make the commission piece first, then this warp afterwards. I'll take a picture of the red warp when it's on the loom; it has three reds in BB-AB-AA-AC-CC-CB-BB progression, 24 inches, 18EPI. The weft, I think, is B, just one color.

I have two final candidate drafts and I like them both but I can't decide which suits the warp color changes better.
I love the way these squares look curvy in this advance twill; I've used it before but I think it suits this red-on-red combo.
This looks fancier but I haven't managed to modify the number of warp ends in a repeat with what I've already got in the warp chain. Working backwards, I know.

Maybe the first one.

2017/09/10

Wait, What??

This morning I woke up and thought: Sept 10 already; 43 days before I leave for Japan and we're busy for a further fortnight after I come home, so that's 41 days after I leave. I wasted so much time with this cold, I better put on my big girl pants and got cracking.
I wrote out a work schedule, the kind I usually have in my head or scribble on the back of envelopes and receipts. I need to finish the baby blankets. I need to weave one red cashmere commission piece to hand-deliver in Japan, on the Jack loom, meaning I have to finish the current cashmere warp before I can get to it. These are minimum Must-Dos; another online sale if I can manage. Goodness, suddenly I'm so busy, and not a hibernating sloth any more. (I don't think real sloths hibernate...)

So instead of going outside to put down more hellebore seedlings into the ground, (which needed doing a couple of months ago, and I so want to make progress, but I'll get it done before I go,) downstairs I went.

The baby blanket with the blue weft went OK; the double-width weaving is a tad hard on the body, but I managed the two repeats I expected. One W crossed on the list. (I know, cryptic; it stands for "weave".) Then I moved onto the cashmere and things went well; I wove the expected 40cm; loosened the tension, went around the back to take off the bleach bottle, came around to the front, and, wait... WHAT??
The large S-hook from which the bleach bottle hung must have gotten stuck on the lease stick, or something much worse and unimaginable. I'm weaving this piece under super loose tension and in retrospect I may have detected the left side tightening but not enough to stop and check the back. And the audiobook was good.

Crikey.

I was by then tired and cold, so I'll think of remedy options overnight and rework it tomorrow. I'm wondering if I can keep the yellow in and only rework the orange. Probably not, but worth thinking.

Crikey.

While weaving, I did learn from yet another van Gogh biography that 1) on the day Vincent showed up in Paris in 1988 and sent Theo a note saying, "here I am!", Sigmund Freud, having completed his studies, left Paris for Vienna; 2) Gauguin fenced, and he took his foil/s to Arles, and he was the only "witness", (Gauguin claimed Vincent confronted him on the streets with razor in his hand earlier in the evening,) ergo the assumption Vincent sliced his ear off, (the latest is it was the whole ear, not just the lobe,) with his own razor, but 3) if Gauguin hurt Vincent but Vincent covered for him in Arles, it is possible René Secrétan shot Vincent in Auvers and Vincent covered for the boy as well. You know?

:-D

2017/09/07

Collection of Near-Inidenticals

On Tuesday when I posted about grids, (about which I have been almost giddy these last few days,) I thought I had more examples of "collections" instead of only the pebble drawing of yore. Today I remembered quick collages I did a week ago. The saturation and hue variations in real life are more varied, but you get the gist.
I have, dare I say, only 16 shafts. Minute differences in shapes and positions need accommodating, (let's face it, simplifying,) even with careful planning, which is disappointing. Unless I employ pick-up extensively. 

In these "collections", I also like each element to be slightly different, not too much. So, my favorites are top-middle, although preferably dots closer to each other,) and sections of bottom-right. Although I also like bottom-left quite a bit, that appears to me a completely different end-product, e.g. a real tapestry.

What do you think??

EDIT: Top-left is supposed to be dots of identical shape/size. They are not, only because of my tracing-the-shape-of-glue-stick skills, and cutting skills.

2017/09/06

Gripping Grids

Staying with LJ and swaps with Tess, (by which I mean not gifts but collaborative work, usually two of us taking turns to work in two books three times each, so mine would be worked by me-Tess-me-Tess-me-Tess then returned to me to keep,) the latest has turned into a mind-boggling geometric gymnastics.
We took four pieces of paper 20cm*20cm, folded them three times, (horizontal, vertical, and one diagonal,) and glued them together to create a book of sorts. We both experimented with different sizes, number of sections, and especially orientation for gluing.

Had I been a forest person I might have had some inkling, but because I am so a tree person, I naively imagined working in, oh, eight 20cm*20cm squares. (I'm calling the outside center of the page Corner A just in case you feel compelled to experiment yourself and/or to fully understand my gibberish.)

Wrong!
For my book now travelling to Scotland, I glued the sections with Corner A positioned at top left, bottom left, top left and bottom left. Sampling told me this would give me the first page opening up, then down, then up, and down again. It turns out, (pun intended,) there is no real up and down because this depends on how I hold the book. And if you are confused, don't worry because this is not the important part.

If you glue the sections together with all Corner As on the left or the right side, regardless of top/bottom, the book has a spine/out-side and a fore-edge/in-side. And while the inside or the side towards me has as many independent square pages as the number of sections, (so, four in my swap book,) [Important Part Alert] all of the outside pages are interrelated.

(If you mix placing Corner As on left and right sides, you have pages opening on both outside and inside. If you can cope, you could potentially make two contents in one physical book. If you're like me, you would almost tear the sample/book trying to figure out how the pages open!)
I used pens on the outside pages and watercolor on the inside pages in my swap book.

If I draw one design in one whole outside page, a quarter or two diagonal quarters become/s part/s of another outside page. And that threw me. I first worked on the first outside page, or what most resembles a front cover in Western-language book. I doodled a grid in, (and here my English gets super dodgy,) rotational symmetry in quadrants, i.e. identical but turned 90 degrees. The whole page looks the same regardless of which side is on the left/top/right/bottom. Then I opened another outside page, and heck! (Sorry for the super low-res pics, I used them just to communicate with Tess, but you get the gist.)
From there on working on four outside pages was like picking a lint off your sweater only to realize you're unravelling the whole garment, only in this case it was piling up and cramming in lines in a way so not according to my plan.

This is probably not going to tie in with my weaving, but it's been gripping; I see a few mini books with lots of lines in my future.
I also found this photo in my camera; a different journal swap with Tess, it's an A2 sheet folded "zine" style in six sections, 12 pages. With the yellows and greens, I was looking for blue pieces of painted paper to unify it, when I saw oh-so-many "Fire and Fury" paper, and used one. Very unlikely color combination for me, but I do like it. This might show up in a weaving some day.

2017/09/05

Griddy

This winter, Ben and I have had a couple of stints of knock-down-drag-out cold. And what's with the cheer in my voice, you ask? This is the kind of cold I know, the kind I had once a year most of my adult life, where there is no doubt I'm sick, not being lazy. I used to see my week of cold as an annual regrouping, and almost looked forward to it. Nothing like the icky underlying-ongoing-unreasonably-tireness.

A couple of times I went a-weeding to make imperceptible progress, too. I try not to feel overwhelmed or discouraged by the magnitude of the task; I am plenty ashamed of not having worked harder and more over the cooler season. Still, it's nice to put things into the ground and watch them perk up in the rain.

* * * * *

Pat helped me with the tapestry technique just before she went to the US; she was to come see me when she got back, and I was going to work like a machine to finish two warps, (six to eight pieces,) if not all three warps in that time. Pfffftttttt. I haven't finished even one piece, and she's been back a fortnight. But I finished the gray piece, and started a second, blue piece. The draft is similar but different.
The cashmere. I started for the fourth time. Although the colors and shapes are the main focus, I wasn't happy with the weaving, the cloth, so I decided to make the color areas bigger in this first piece. The treadling is the simplified 4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-1-2-3, but I might mix it up a little. Or not.
Sorry about the bad colors and the wonky tension; it was late andd I took off the bleach bottle at the back weighting the left end. The right selvedge is crap; curiously, when I was using the trickier treadling and weaving slowly, selvedge was better.

* * * * *

Recently a thought came to me while weeding. One of the things I find visually pleasing is a row or grid of similar but unidentical things, like the pebbles I did a while back. This was the original doodle.
I've always been attracted to photographs of, say, five or seven hand-thrown teacups in a row, and how sad cup/s looked at home in comparison. I always put it down to something like the psychology of advertising or doubting I've selected the "right" cup/s, but only recently realized it's more about visual pleasure than greed. And how much less I'm interested in a row of identical items/motifs.

The grid drawing I've been doing for a year for mix media swap journals is another; to me these are the same as collections of motifs. I'm quite enamored by my grids, so I'll post a few, some of which you have seen before.
From September last year and  two of the first; I wanted something that look like maps or aerial urban shots; I had in mind post-war Japanese shanty towns.
In early October, hard to see, but I draw on top of all kinds of backgrounds, and the focus was for the grid to appear in and out of the backgrounds. I used metallic gel pens so depending on the angle I could always see my grid clearly.
By late October I was trying different size pens for different size grids. These are not drawn on the pages, but drawn elsewhere, scanned, printed onto transparent plastic, and rubbed on.
In November, I focused on extending a map.
In late January; I started out drawing my usual map but it/they morphed into building/s, making me think of the SIS building to be specific. This was the first time I saw my grid vertically, leading me to think of cityscapes and flat maps simultaneously.
I've done numerous grids since but this last weekend I most definitely had cityscapes in mind for these envelopes. And the closer the buildings to me, (bottom of the envelopes, which got cut off in the scanning but you get the gist,) the smaller and more crowded.
Backgrounds, (watercolor monoprint blotches for these,) enhanced the feel of cityscape; more generally they give another element/dimension, in some instances distractions, in others a focus. I did the right one first and you can see me undecided whether this is going to be a map or a cityscape whereas in the left there is no hesitation. I even left a wee gap at the top.
For a year I worked with limited variety of marks: vertical and horizontal lines or + signs in different density, and earlier on, coloring in. I started including vertical and horizontal within a grid, and somewhere I tried an x. On the right, I started exploring greater variety of grid, (i.e. building) sizes and leaving more blank.

Our coffee table is made of recycled wood which is not only not at all flat but has gaping holes. (Ergo visitors are asked to use coasters not to protect the surface but to prevent their cups/glasses toppling. Seriously!) At first crooked lines bothered me greatly but they give a different flavour to the more regimented look. Slanted horizontal lines in particular give the feel a building stands at an angle to others.

I draw grids, them sometimes cut/tear to use in collages, and even draw grids, waves, and other things on top of the collages in same and different colors/mediums. I'm playing with these for three reasons: first is I love drawing these in the evenings while the telly is on, or off, to unwind and concentrate simultaneously; secondly, I wonder if this is one way to reconcile my more predictable, plan/sample/weave work mode with a more relaxed/thrilling-but-hit-or-miss mode, combining meticulous drafting with hand-manipulated techniques, (which is most definitely easier said than done, I know); the third is I'd like to develop these so I can draw more refined/considered versions to make something I want to frame and hang on my wall, or as a 3D "architectural" model. (To me they are close enough to architectural drawings I've always liked, with Outsider/Naive/Deconstructionist/Abstract flavour, to make them unique and hide technical shortcomings.)

Life is full of wonder.